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San Pedro de Atacama is a really beautiful oasis town located in the northeast of Chile. If you, like me, are not too fond of the rain then San Pedro could be for you - it ever rains here. But I suppose that's not too surprising considering the geography: San Pedro is as it's name suggests is a desert town and the Atacama desert is the driest desert in the world. At 2400m / 7000 ft above sea level, many visitors to the town get altitude sickness. Sarah and I made our way here by coming from Iquique in Chile. So while we had acclimatized quite well, unfortunately half of us were struck down by another illness.....
Arriving in San Pedro by bus, you'll get dropped off in the town square. If you happen to get dropped of in the early morning then you'll likely walk by a few restaurants serving breakfast. Outside one of the restaurants, there might be a guy shouting things like "Best breakfast in town" That might also sound irresistible considering you've just got off an overnight bus that you've been on for the last 8-10 hours. Myself and Sarah needed a coffee and a bite
to eat so we popped in to this one restaurant. I had a steak sandwich and Sarah opted for eggs with a salsa sauce. For the next 3 days I explored the town and tended to a sickly patient. Moral of the story: Don't order the eggs!
Despite Sarah's illness she rallied a few times and we got to check out the area. One night we did an astronomical tour which was really interesting. About five miles from the town and in the middle of the desert there is a space observatory. It is owned and operated by a Frenchman named Alain Maury. He's a really funny guy who, along with his wife, explained and pointed out many different consolations, stars and planets. It was both fun and interesting to see the stars and learn more at the same time. They have about 10 massive telescopes set up to view the clear night sky. We clearly saw the Milky Way and Andromeda Solar Systems, Orion's Belt, Southern Cross, Gemini, Sirius, my favorite Scorpio and Saturn. If you are interested in doing the tour you can checkout www.SpaceObs.com. After the tour, we all bundled into a barn-house where Alain recapped
and gave us a chat on the space observatory program as we drank some hot chocolate. It was hard to get detailed photos of what we saw, but I did manage to get a nice shot of Saturn and it's rings thanks to Alain and a telescope that has about a million times more zoom than our camera!
Another tour worth doing is the Valle de Luna. It is located to the west of San Pedro. The Moon Valley is an interesting area of formation of stone and sand and the valley receives this name due to the great similarity of the place to the moon landscapes. The excursion starts by visiting the enormous enormous geologic formation, which are located in one of the most barren zones of the planet. It is an area of great beauty that resembles the moon landscape by the stone formation, petrified salt and sand, that during millenia, floods and winds have molded. To cap it all off we walked to the top of a ledge to see the sunset. It was amazing and the rapid change in colors was quite incredible.
The town of San Pedro is also quite beautiful and well
worth strolling around. The Church is located just off the central plaza and as you can see it is a gorgeous building. It is interesting to think that it dates back to 1641! At night there are loads of nice little restaurants and a bars to choose from. I was also delighted to find a local sports club where I got to play some soccer. With tourism being critical to the town there are tonnes of tour agencies, and this can make it difficult to decide what to do and which company to choose. Booking the tour of the Salt Flats was the hardest one for us to decide on and from what we heard from other tourists this is common dilemma. You can research online, go to the agencies, and even check out the comment book at the tourist office. The problem is that every company has conflicting reviews. One of my favorites involved a company which cancelled the tour at the last minute because the driver was drunk! Or then there's the one about a couple of tourists being 'kidnapped' by local farmers on the tour (sounded like an exaggeration, but was a good read!). In the end
we opted for 'Atacama Mistica' and they were excellent. Right from the start when we met the agency guy it felt good. Then we had to push it back a day because Sarah still felt dodgey and they were great. Finally on the morning of the tour our alarm didn't go off and they came to the hostal and waited for us to get ready! The tour itself was world class, with a great guide and even though he didn't speak English it helped us improve our Espanol.
We hope you enjoyed reading a bit about our trip to San Pedro and seeing some photos. Next up, we'll share our experience in the Salar de Uyuni / Bolivian Salt Flats.
Much Love,
Bref & Sarah-
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